A Taste of Mortality
by Sersee Grayson
Summary: The Lord of the Western Lands has never encountered something he could not stop or slow with his claws. Except the greedy jaws of time gripping his Rin. Post series and completely in character.
1. Ownership of the Heart

**Disclaimer: **I do not, and will never, own Inuyasha. Everything, of course, belongs to Rumiko Takahashi.

**Summary: **The Lord of the Western Lands has never encountered something he could not stop or slow with his claws. Except the greedy jaws of time gripping his Rin.

**A/N:** So it has been a good many years since I've written fanfiction again! I have been taking a prolonged and procrastinating break from my studying to rewatch some of my favourite Inuyasha episodes and renewed my obsession with the adorableness of Sesshomaru and Rin. My gears are slightly rusty, so please go a little easy on me.

With that set and done, please enjoy!

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><p><strong>Ownership of Her Heart.<strong>

The Lord of the Western Lands flew above the many human villages that were in his lands. In the past twelve years since he left his human girl-child, he has returned to one particular village on the border of the Western and Southern lands. He has stopped at one particular kimono shop every month, and purchased the finest kimono they had to offer.

By the second year, the seamstress, who was a youkai, had learned to expect the regal and intimidating Lord every month, and to present him with the finest of all kimonos. She also timidly did all the talking, with the Taiyoukai nodding slightly in affirmation or stating an emotionless negative. Over the years, the sizes of the kimonos grew increasingly larger, leading the youkai seamstress to believe the growth process was that of a human, and not his youkai daughter, as she once thought the kimonos to be for. But fear stayed her tongue but not her curiosity, and she did not question whether or not the Taiyoukai inherited his father's oddest and most notorious trait.

This year, slightly earlier than previous years, the youkai seamstress sensed his immense demonic aura, and jumped. She hastily abandoned the kimono she was repairing for her daughter, and pulled a beautiful cream and pink silk piece that she had prepared especially for him.

"Sesshomaru-sama," she said as she bowed the Taiyoukai into her shop. He nodded in acknowledgement. "I-I apologise, I didn't expect you to be so early." Another curt nod as she bowed again, and presented the cream and pink kimono to him. "If it pleases my Lord to wait, I shall go fetch the obi to compliment this kimono."

The youkai seamstress bowed once again, retreated quickly to the back, and selected a perfect indigo silk sash to go along with the kimono in the Taiyoukai's hands. As she returned, she used the opportunity to study the demon perfection in her shop and wondered, as she had for the past ten years, who the lady he was so devoted to was. At that moment, which she would come to regret later on, her curiosity got the better of her.

"Sesshomaru-sama, if I may be to bold," she said shyly as she handed him the sash, "is the Lady you buy these silk kimonos for every month a human?"

She watched with her head down, as the Taiyoukai froze for a split second, eyes widening in shock, before the composed mask set in again. He looked at her for what felt like eternity before he spoke.

"Yes." Sharp and crisp.

He turned and walked out of her shop without another word, and the shocked youkai seamstress could only stare after him. She knew it was a possibility, but she did not believe until she heard it.

In a stupor, she forgot about the gold coins he left. She promptly returned to the back room, where she sought her sister, and gossiped into the night about the recent discoveries regarding the fabled Lord of the West. They eagerly discussed the possibility of hanyou heirs to the throne with the shallow delight of maidens with slightly too much time on their hands.

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><p>Twelve years have passed since the defeat of Naraku. Kagome and Inuyasha were happily married with a brood of their own. Sango and Miroku's three beautiful children were training to be demon slayers like their parents, utilizing both the holy powers of their Chichiue and the brute strength of their Okaasan.<p>

Rin, working as Kagome's apprentice after Lady Kaede's death, has grown into a young woman, desired for her cheerful demeanour, her slender body, and her exotic face. The braver village men overcame their fear of her demon guardian (that never fails to visit her monthly) and asked her to grace them with her presence. Some have even gone as far as to ask Kagome-sama for Rin's hand in marriage, to which Kagome-sama would laugh awkwardly and tell them she's not responsible for who Rin chooses as a husband.

They would gift to her an endless supply of jewellery, sandals, flowers, and other useless trinkets to which Rin would refuse gently and tell them that she cannot marry, for Sesshomaru-sama will come for her when she is old enough, and then she would be a travelling nomad with her Sesshomaru-sama once more. Lady Kaede had wanted her to be able to choose when she was older and wiser, but in her mind, there was never any debate. She would live with humans and learn, and when Sesshomaru-sama said she was old enough, she would immediately join him again on his travels.

She could never forgive herself if she did not keep her lonely Lord company.

Most of the men got the hint, but not Kohaku. He had started to make more frequent trips back to his sister's full family, at first, telling her that his sister and his brother-in-law needed help looking after the children, then, as the years passed, his excuses gradually became blunts truths.

He wanted her. He loved her. He's loved her for a long time. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to marry her.

One night, as a product of her loneliness and her lingering childhood crush on him, they shared a brief and innocent kiss underneath the moonlight.

"Koha...ku." She said as she broke out of the kiss and touched her lips uncertainly with her fingertips. Kohaku looked at her with such a vast ocean of love in his eyes that she was instantly uncomfortable, and felt a stab of panic. "I... I must go... and think. I am sorry."

And with that, she turned tail and ran, leaving a stunned Kohaku behind. She ran blindly, thoughts flying wildly, until she heard the rushing water of the stream.

_Might as well wash._ She though ruefully, the tendrils of panic in her stomach giving away to regret. Kohaku didn't deserve the flighty woman she was, he deserved a wife who could freely give him her whole heart. She had but a piece, her Lord held the rest in his deadly claws.

At the stream, Rin worked to remove her clothes methodically as she contemplated her situation and Sesshomaru in her mind.

She knew full and well that she had reached childbearing age, most of the women she used to play with have been married and several were with child. Kohaku would've made an excellent husband that everyone would approve of. Well not exactly _every_one.

_Sesshomaru-sama would not be pleased._

That thought came instinctively, unquestionably. And so she held off suitors and prayed that her Lord would come and take her away on long journeys once more.

As she finished her bath, she slowly walked to shore, mindlessly reaching for her clothing. She was so deep in contemplation that she did not react fast enough when she found her hand landing on something scaly and slimy. Frozen in shock, she stared as the water viper raised its head threateningly and a split second later, Rin found herself on her knees on top of her yukata, cradling her hand which was pulsing in pain. Slowly, but surely, she felt herself losing her sight, and her breathing became weak and laboured as she kneeled naked on the floor beside the stream.

Her mind started to lose consciousness, and Rin found herself closing her eyes and gripping tightly to the pain in her hand, willing herself to focus and stay awake.

_Sesshomaru... sama, help me..._ She did not know whether or not she said it outloud.

_Sesshomaru... sama!_

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><p><strong>AN: **Reading reviews will always be a pleasure !


	2. The Unabridged Mortality

**Disclaimer:**I do not, and will never, own Inuyasha. Although I do hear that Inuyasha made Rumiko one of the most wealthiest in Japan, and God knows Japanese people are damned rich enough as it is.

**A/N:** Except I shouldn't be so mean in the wake of that earthquake and nuclear explosion. I take it back. My heart of all hearts go out to you.

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><p>The Unabridged Mortality.<p>

Flying above the treetops, but steadily dropping, the Lord of the Western lands radiated immense demonic aura as he began to approach his half-brother's village. He knew that his half-brother would sense this aura as Sesshomaru, and alert Rin before he even reached the outskirts of the village sparing him the dealings with annoyingly terrified villagers.

He had contemplated asking Rin to come back, after all she has spent closer to twelve years in a human village, but he has never been able to form the words. Excuses would run shamefully in his mind: just one more month, he would try to convince himself. Or one of his favourites: _the timing is her decision. _

But today was different. Today he will ask. No, demand. That's why he had arrived earlier than usual.

As much as he hated to admit even to himself, the plain truth was that he would not know what to do should she choose not to come back with him. His pride would rather he be ignorant then be so blatantly rejected.

A faint voice suddenly broke into his line of thought.

_Sesshomaru... sama, help me... _

He froze atop the skyline with a familiar, yet foreign stab of fear that he had not felt in a long time.

Rin.

Without a second thought, Sesshomaru halted his forward progression in the sky and dropped like a stone toward the ground, following the recently discovered faint scent of Rin. He raced through the forest, simultaneously dodging and cutting down trees, all the while his brain tortured him with malicious thoughts about what could have happened to the poor girl.

_If she's hurt... _

His trail of thought stopped as his ears picked up the sound of water. _Was she drowned?_ As his demon eyes caught sight of a suntanned arm on the floor followed by the rest of her body, and he mentally felt a split second of relief.

"Rin."

That relief quickly turned into slight panic as Rin did not move. Sesshomaru moved to her side and picked her up as he had done many times before when she was younger.

"Rin. Wake." He said knowing it was useless. _His Rin would never disobey him_, he thought mildly as his eyes scanned her naked body for a sign of damage. Ignoring a slight quickening of his heart, which he attributed as slightly rising panic, he spotted puncture marks on her arm. At the same time his sensitive ears, which were trying to assess heart condition, picked up the soft sound of a repitilian body slithering on forest vegetation.

_Poisonous snake wound? _That would explain the slowing of Rin's beating heart. Another rush of panic seeped into Sesshomaru, followed swiftly by anger. _Damn you, Inuyasha..._ He would destroy his half-brother, whose miko wife promised Rin's continued safety in the wake of the old miko's death.

But he wasted no more time, he reached into the pile of Rin's clothes and picked up a yukata, which he hurriedly dressed Rin's unconscious form in. Then he took off into the skies with Rin held securely in his arms.

888

"Jaken."

A short green imp, who stood in the stables tending a two headed dragon, jumped a foot and simultaneously dropped a large brush he had been using to comb the hair of said dragon.

"Mi-milord! You didn't have to scare me so!" The green imp immediately prostrated himself. "Eh... milord? Why have you returned so early? Did you not find..." The imp raised his head and looked at the white figure before his knelt body. "Milord! You brought..."

"Jaken. Shut up and get the healer." Sesshomaru already walked away from the annoying imp before he finished. "Bring him to my chambers."

"Yes, milord, right away, milord!"

He could hear Rin's heart slowing more as he flew to his chambers, ignoring various bowing servants that lined his stronghold. He wrenched the sliding door to his bedroom open with great ferocity that it broke into pieces. Ignoring the mess, he hurried in and placed Rin on his bed, his thoughts were already scattered with panic.

"Jaken." He called as loudly as he could, but he knew it was useless. The imp would come as fast as he could.

Sesshomaru placed his hand on Tenseiga, even knowing it cannot halt the rapid tumble toward death he smelled on his Rin. He could count on one hand the numbers of the times he had been truly agitated, and decided this was not a feeling he liked very much, but he could not pry himself away from his source of agitation.

Without tearing his ears, or nose away from his deathly pale ward, the mighty Lord of the West begun to pace. So distracted was he that he did not hear the door bursting open in his study, emitting the green imp, and an old weasel demon trailing close behind, both carrying armloads of herbs and medicines.

"Milord!" Jaken cried as they both prostrated themselves before him, albeit the weasel demon with slight difficulty. He froze and gave them a furiously cold glare, to which they both jumped in fearand hastened to tend to the girl.

So with the medicinal wisdom of the old weasel demon, the gentle (if a bit pompous) care of Jaken, and the silent constant vigil Sesshomaru kept at Rin's bedside, the beautiful girl slowly healed from the poison of the water viper.

It was a lovely spring morning when the young ward of Sesshomaru opened her deep brown eyes, and sleepily met her beloved lord's own. Her expression was tired and weary, but she gave her demon lord a weak smile with a semblance of her old gaiety before nodding back to sleep.

Her minutes of wakefulness were so brief it may have been an illusion of too many hours awake. Yet, it brought the Western Lord an enormous wave of relief. He finally dozed off where he sat, in a sleep so light, he would surely wake at the slightest disturbance from his ward.

Which, of course, was his intention.

888

In the following days, the human girl started spending more time awake than asleep, chattering weakly, yet with great vigour and enthusiasm, to her Lord. She started stomaching soup, then solid food.

And when she gained enough energy to walk, she started exploring the vast stronghold with earnest. Gazing and taking in the cold stone walls, the lush tapestries of demon battles long ago, and the many relics that lined the walls of her Lord's ancestral home. She started to talk to the various servants that tended her to alleviate her boredom, but after catching on to the undercurrents of disgust mingled with fear, she stopped. Instead, she preferred to spend her days in the garden, and her nights by her lord's side, reading the various books that most scholars would trade their left eye to read.

Rin was finally where she had dreamed she would be once again: living with her Lord.

"Rin." He had called to her one day. She was dancing about the gardens, and at the sound of his call, she gathered up the flowers she had been picking for him, and hurried over. She skipped to a stop in front of her stoic lord, and beamed.

"Rin." He said again, as he looked at her intensely for a split second before turning his gaze to her immense garden. Her grin faltered a bit. _What's wrong?_ "Do you wish to a return to live in that human village?"

Rin's eyes grew wide and she let the bouquet of flowers fall from her hand as she grabbed onto Sesshomaru's sleeve and looked, with startling ferocity, into his eyes. "No! I want to be with Sesshomaru-sama forever!"

And with that, as much as he hated to admit it, he was satisfied, and his chest felt slightly lighter. He didn't talk again as he let his young human ward pick up the fallen blossoms and present to him the bouquet of wild flowers accompanied by face splitting grins.

The feared Lord of the West was unable to deny his human ward anything.

Overtime, the fields surrounding the stronghold burst with flowers of every kind. The servants that were unable to fathom the existence of a human in the house left, but those that stayed out of loyalty to the Lord grew to love the sunny girl. The dreary rooms of the stronghold soon transformed into a vibrant place heavily influence by Rin's cheery personality.

Many in the lands however, especially his mother, questioned his ways of upbringing, but he was never one to care about what they said.

And so his ward grew up alongside the trees of the forest, the flowers in her garden, and the fish she would catch for her dinner. She was more sunbaked than regal, more lush than refined, and more wild than ladylike. But she was loved by all, known across the lands as Lady Rin, the human hime of the Western Lands that the feared Lord held in such regard.

Every year, the Lord of the West would call to his human ward on the same day, and underneath the same cherry tree, he would ask her the same question: "Rin. Do you wish to return to live in that human village?" She would never hesitate in giving him the identical answer, year after year.

_Forever, with you, Sesshomaru-sama. Itsumo._

888

Years passed.

Nothing changed except the smell of life streaking towards death which grew on his human ward, recently more death than life. Sesshomaru's duties seemed to keep him closer and closer to home, the durations shorter and shorter, until they finally stopped all together.

It was around that time that Rin took herself to bed more and more, contented with just gazing out her window as autumn leaves changed into falling snow.

It was also around this time that he chose to spend more and more time in the girl's own lavish quarters, tending to his businesses in a comfortable silence, no more than several feet away from his human ward. He knew, as well as most of his youkai servants, that her time on earth was nearing an end.

"Sesshomaru-sama." She wrung her wrinkled hands as she called to the silent figure outside her balcony doors. "This is it, isn't it?"

The demon standing on the balcony nodded without turning his head. _Emotions would be clearly painted in his expressionless face, _Rin thought to herself with a silent chuckle as she sunk back on her pillows. Years with her Lord has taught her that he wasn't as expressionless as he would like to think he was.

"Can you... bring me to see my garden one last time, Sesshomaru-sama, before the snow covers them?"

He turned around and faced her, yet never quite able to look into her eyes. He nodded wordlessly.

He never_ could_ deny her anything.

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><p><strong>AN:** Thank you all for reviewing and for putting me on your favorite/alerts. Special thanks to icegirljenni for reviewing less than 15 minutes after this story came up… you made my day.

I also did not enjoy writing this at all, I felt this was intensely shallow. _But_ I am very proud of my Rin/Kohaku story and would be honoured if you checked it out. I enjoyed writing it... and it made me cry tears of pride... Oh, I am so hopelessly conceited...

If you have some time on your hands, I would especially recommend _The Pearl_ by asiancherries. It's probably one of the best Rin/Sesshomaru I've had the pleasure to come across.


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